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Keelvar’s August Release packed with Powerful New Features

Keelvar’s August release contains many new important features aimed at making it faster to load data; having greater flexibility to automate management of data outliers and limit actions that could be inadvertent.

Upload/Download of Bidder Configuration Details
From the ‘Bidder Configuration’ screen, users can now enter or update visibility information and bonus/malus data, per bidder and lot, offline. Click the ‘Download’ button to download the Bidder Configuration file (Figure 1). Complete it and then click ‘Upload’ from the ‘Bidder Configuration’ screen to update the completed file. For visibilty, use ‘TRUE’ if visible and ‘FALSE’ if hidden.

Figure 1: Enter Bidder Configuration Data Offline

Ability to Specify a Minimum and/or Maximum Value for Number and Currency Attributes
Minimum and/or maximum values can now be established for both Number and Currency attributes. Bidders will receive an error message if they enter values that are outside the limits.
Check the ‘Restrict input values’ box to view these fields (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Minimum and Maximum Limits for Currency and Number Attributes

Ability to Specify a Mimimum and/or Maximum Bid Value per Lot
Users can prevent bidders from generating bid values above and/or below specified limits. The user needs to first create purchaser-entered Currency or Number attributes. Then, those attributes can be mapped to either the ‘Minimum Bid Value’ or ‘Maximum Bid Value’ limit (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Map Minimum and/or Maximum Bid Value per Lot

New Event Setting: Bid Change Limit
From the ‘Event Settings’ screen, users can specify a ‘Bid Change Limit’, which is the maximum change allowed between consecutive bids (e.g., a bidder organization’s second-round bid compared to its first-round bid in an RFQ, or the next bid in an auction compared to the current bid). This setting helps prevent outlier bids by notifying bidders when the bid change is above the allowed limit (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Error Message Shown When Bid Change Limit Exceeded

View Online Status of Bidders
Purchasers can now view which bidder organizations have users currently online. The color of the traffic light indicator next to the organization name denotes the following (Figure 5):

Green light – One or more users from the bidder organization are currently online. Hover over the icon to see a tooltip with the number of users online/recently online.
Amber light – One or more users from the bidder organization were recently online. Hover over the icon to see a tooltip with the number of users who were recently online.
Gray light – No users from the bidder organization are currently online.

Figure 5: Bidder Online Status

Block Bidder Options
Users now have additional bidder blocking actions available to them. Access the following options by clicking the down arrow in the ‘Actions’ column next to a bidder on the ‘Bidder Activity’ screen, and clicking ‘Block Bidder’:

Block from event – Selecting this option will eject the bidder from the event. The bidder will not be able to access the event.
Block from current round – Selecting this option will prevent the bidder from placing bids in the current round only. The bidder will have read-only access to the event.
Block from current and future rounds – Selecting this option will prevent the bidder from placing bids in the current round and future rounds. The bidder will have read-only access to the event.

Figure 6: Available Blocking Actions
The ‘Status’ column will reflect the selected blocking action for that bidder.

Other Enhancements

RFI questions can be imported while an event is paused

The ‘Edit Event Team Membership’ window supports sorting by Last Name and First Name

Offline events can be paused to make event changes

For RFQ events, bundle bidding is turned off by default

For auction events, the decrement formula now uses the current lot bid as the default